A different take on chocolate fruitcake

It was two days before Christmas and my mom was in a tizzy. Where, she asked, was the fruitcake that I had promised to make for our Noche Buena meal? Fruitcake was the Christmas cake of our childhood. The ritual involved in the making of fruitcake began towards the end of October. Mom would go to Killon in Quiapo to buy the fruits and nuts and spices for the cake, and she would come home laden with several kilos worth of ingredients. Then she would take out the butter to soften it, measure and sift the flour, chop the dried fruits and nuts, beat the eggs. She would prepare the pans, cutting the brown paper liners to size and greasing each of the 10 or so loaf pans. She would then mix the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients and the resulting mud-like mixture would be so heavy she had to mix everything using both hands. After that, the baking would begin, filling the whole house with a heady, spicy aroma. The loaves would bake for a long time, something like an hour and a half. When the loaves were baked, another ritual would begin – the aging of the fruitcakes, that is, the brushing of each loaf with cherry brandy everyday for the next 40 or 50 days until a few days before the 25th of December, when the fruitcake would be wrapped up in foil and boxed as a gift.

Except for the glazed fruits, we liked fruitcake. So, mom always made sure there would be at least two loaves left for us after her fruitcake frenzy. The whole procedure was a two-month ritual at the very least, so she was horrified to learn that I hadn’t even begun baking anything! To my rescue came the domestic goddess herself, Nigella Lawson, and her recipe for chocolate fruitcake. All I had to do was cook everything in a saucepan and then bake the mixture afterwards. The chocolate was the bonus, the fruitcake’s little secret something that my mom would never think of using in her version of the popular holiday food gift. The recipe that follows is my take on Nigella’s easy chocolate fruitcake. It yields two 6-inch round fruitcakes. Chocolate Fruitcake 400 grams prunes, dates and raisins 125 grams cranberries 100 grams walnuts, chopped 100 grams chocolate, chopped 8 fluid ounces brandy 175 grams unsalted butter, softened 125 grams dark muscovado sugar 5 fluid ounces honey 5 fluid ounces coffee liqueur 2 whole oranges, juice and zest only 1 teaspoon mixed spice 2 tablespoons dark cocoa powder 3 eggs, beaten 225 grams flour ½ teaspoon baking powder ½ teaspoon baking soda A day before baking. Chop the dried fruits and nuts so that they are the same size, and soak them in 8 fluid ounces of brandy. I used more prunes for a moist fruitcake. Dates and raisins are sweet so I used less of each. The tartness of the cranberries tempered the sweetness of the dates. The earthy taste of the walnuts would assert itself despite the addition of the brandy, and later, the coffee liqueur and rum. You can use any combination of available fruits and nuts and chopped chocolate, but make sure that everything adds up to 725 grams. For the brandy, I used honest-to-goodness gut-burning brandy – not cherry brandy. In Nigella’s original recipe, the fruits and nuts are not pre-soaked. On baking day. Preheat the oven to 300F. Grease two 6x3-inch diameter round pans. Line the sides of the pans with baking parchment, cut into strips that are twice as high as the baking pans. This will prevent the tops of the cakes from browning too much before the rest is cooked through. To the soaked fruits and nuts, add the softened butter, muscovado sugar, honey, coffee liqueur, orange juice and zest, mixed spice, dark cocoa and chopped chocolate. According to the UK-based Nigella, muscovado has a taste of treacle, a dark syrup made from refined sugar much used in British sweets and pastries. For coffee liqueur, use Tía María, Kahlúa or 5 fluid ounces of rum added to 1 tablespoon of granulated coffee. Mixed spice, also known as pudding spice – a staple of English cooking – is a blend of cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, ginger, cloves and coriander and cardamom (if available). If you are in the United States, you can use pumpkin spice as a substitute. I make my own mix and just use the amounts I need. For cocoa, I used Dutch-processed cocoa powder. Chop the chocolate into chunks if you prefer a bold chocolate taste. Note that Nigella did not use chopped chocolate. Heat the mixture until it reaches a gentle boil, stirring the mixture as the butter melts. Let it simmer for 10 minutes. Remove the saucepan from heat and let it stand for 30 minutes to cool. Add the beaten eggs, flour, baking powder and baking soda and mix well. Carefully pour the fruitcake mixture into the two lined cake pans. Place the pans in the preheated oven and bake for 1 to 1 ½ hours, or until the tops of the cakes are firm but still have a shiny and sticky look. If you insert a sharp knife in the middle of each cake, it will be a little uncooked in the middle. Place the cakes on a cooling rack. They will continue to cook as they cool. Remove the cakes from the pans and brush with rum. Decorate as desired. Nigella decorated her fruitcake with dark chocolate-covered coffee beans and edible glitter. The more traditional finishing touch would be some marzipan or almond paste – way too much sugar for me, and the fruitcake was already weighed down by all the sugar from the fruits and muscovado and honey. I didn’t plan to decorate the fruitcake at all on Christmas eve. But seeing some grapes gave me an idea. I placed a few grapes in the middle of the fruitcake, then I crushed more walnuts and sprinkled everything over the top of the cake. Finally, I drizzled “snow" – a teaspoonful of confectioner’s sugar sieved over the grapes and the rest of the cake. It was just right! - YA, GMANews.TV